Turkey Threatens To Retaliate If US Cuts Off Arms Sales

Turkey relies heavily on American-made weapons. The United States sells billions of dollars worth of weapons to the nation each year. As a NATO member, such sales make sense.

However, there has been some concern about Turkey in recent years, primarily whether it’s actually an ally or not. As a result, Congress is considering a measure that would suspend weapons sales to the country pending a report outlining the full extent of the relationship between the United States and Turkey.

Turkey will retaliate if the United States enacts a proposed law that would halt weapons sales to the country, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Sunday.

Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives released details on Friday of a $717 billion annual defense policy bill, including a measure to temporarily halt weapons sales to Turkey.

In an interview with broadcaster CNN Turk, Cavusoglu said the measures in the bill were wrong, illogical and not fitting between the NATO allies.

“If the United States imposes sanctions on us or takes such a step, Turkey will absolutely retaliate,” Cavusoglu said. “What needs to be done is the U.S. needs to let go of this.”

The proposed U.S. National Defense Authorization Act, which is several steps from becoming law, would ask the Defense Department to provide Congress with a report on the relationship between the United States and Turkey, and would block the sale of major defense equipment until the report was complete.

Turkey plans to buy more than 100 of Lockheed Martin’s (LMT.N) F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, and is also in talks with Washington over the purchase of Patriot missiles.

Part of the issue is Turkey’s recent purchase of S-400 surface-to-air missiles from Russia.

However, let’s talk about how Turkey could retaliate against the United States. It’s not like the United States military buys a lot of weapons from Turkish companies. That doesn’t mean Americans don’t, though. Canik pistols, for example, are surprisingly popular for many people due to their pretty low price point and decent quality. It seems likely that if there’s any kind of retaliation from Turkey, Caniks are going to be hard to get your hands on.

For fans of the weapons, as well as people on a tight budget, this is going to make things a fair bit more difficult.

Luckily, this is America, land of the free and home of the brave. There are still options even without Turkish guns in gun store cases. Whether they’re as good or better than something like a Canik, I’ll leave for you to debate. What I will say is that the American gun consumer probably won’t notice too much of a blip in the grand scheme of things.

As for other industries? Well, I’ll leave that for others to speculate on.

What I do know is that we in the American firearms community will most likely never even notice anything, at all, if this were to happen. Then again, all of this could be a colossal bluff.